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No Time For Flash Cards

preschool activities, kids crafts, and books.

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Alphabet Peg Dolls – Alphabet For Starters

Letter Crafts For Kids

 After reading to your child daily the best advice is to surround your child with a print rich environment.  Point out the letters all around you, read recipes, read food boxes, read the letters you see around you and show them to your child and play with letters. There is no need for flash cards when you are learning all the time. These alphabet peg dolls were made because my daughter loves babies so I made her some babies with letters to play with. This is the 4th part in our series Alphabet For Starters – easy and fun ways to introduce letters to your little learner.

  1. Gather your materials. I am using left over Martha Stewart Craft Paint from my Mother’s Day Bag I made. However you can use any paint made for wood. Read the instructions to see if it requires a sealant etc… ours didn’t which is good because I didn’t have any. Also make sure it’s non toxic because even though I am not suggesting these dolls go in any mouths , you still want to be as safe as possible.  I also used painter’s tape, wood peg clothes pins, and a few brushes.alphabet crafts
  2. Start by taping off a section of the doll. This will be where you paint the letter later.letter recognition
  3. Next start painting. I painted in batches. You can paint however you want but I started with the mouths.
  4. Then I added hair, and a body color. I am clearly not an artist but my daughter doesn’t care at all. 
  5. When dry peel off the tape.
  6. Paint the letters on and let dry.
  7. Play ! 

Some ways we have played with these dolls :

  • Put them in a bag and discover them one at a time.
  • Play with them in the doll house.
  • Hide them in the family room and go on a hunt to find them.
  • Count them.
  • Make them kiss . My daughter grabs them , makes them kiss then I ask which two are kissing and she tells me. Not a bad game !

Alphabet Board Books

ABC, Baby Me! by Susan B. Katz is a great Alphabet book for babies and toddlers. My daughter grabbed it from the board book cart at the library today and started chanting ” ead, ead, ead!” right away. I was so delighted and so was she as we flipped all the pages to see babies and parents in every day situations from A to Z. The illustrations are sweet and soft and inviting for little readers.

Flora McDonnell’s ABC by Flora McDonnell is a great board book for babies through the toddler years. It couldn’t be a simpler book but the vivid illustrations and the very deliberate limited number of objects per page is perfect for our youngest readers. Each page has two items for each letter and that was the perfect amount to point out with my daughter who is 20 months. It kept her attention but didn’t overwhelm her.

Winnie-The-Pooh’s ABC Book Inspired by A.A. Milne is a simple book that will be a hit with Winnie-the-Pooh fan in your house. There is nothing extra special about the writing in this book but it’s cute , simple and filled with illustrations from the original Winnie-the-Pooh.

 

 

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34 Comments

  6. I love this idea, but I’m having trouble finding the clothes pins like the ones shown here. Where did you find these? I can’t find any that are flat on the bottom.
    Thanks!

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  8. I totally agree that filling your home with print-rich materials is key to encouraging literacy. I still credit our alphabet magnetic letters on the fridge for really encouraging my toddler to learn his alphabet. He started off by identifying the sounds each letter makes, until he was able to say the letters themselves. We also have an alphabet rug, alphabet magnetic links, alphabet blocks…

    He is now into identifying certain words like “stop” that we see on stop signs, and it’s amazing to see him continue to “get it” when it comes to literacy.

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  14. I love the idea and it look so cute! This is a great way to get your kids attention to read the alphabet. That is why i’m so excited to try this for my son! Thanks for sharing this to us.

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  15. We made these over the weekend and they are a HIT!! We incorporated the add’l letters in the Spanish alphabet. When I posted the pics to my page, I added the link back to here. This is such a great idea-THANK YOU!

    I don’t know how to post pics directly on to here but I would love to share 🙂 so I am going to try and add the link to my photo album under website…

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